In America (9 page)

But Henryk was not like this, not like other doctors. He might say, Trust the good air of Zakopane to work its curative powers. Henryk was a great believer in air. But he did not say, Rest, have a mental blackout, confine yourself to womanly occupations like lacemaking. There was nobody Maryna liked talking to as much as Henryk. If only he weren't so obviously enamored. It was one thing for young men like Ryszard and Tadeusz to fall in love with her; she knew the power of a reigning actress to inspire such reckless, perfectly sincere but shallow infatuations. But that this intelligent, melancholy older man was pining with un-avowed love was painful to her. She wished he would sneeze.

“Sneeze, Henryk!”

“I beg your pardon.”

“I like to hear you sneeze. It makes me find you ridiculous.”

“I
am
ridiculous.”

Maryna sneezed. “See how handsomely I do it?”

It was last September and they were sitting in a sun-filled room in the hut Henryk had rented for the summer. With one larch table, two chairs, and a bench, the walls bare except for a row of crudely colored pictures on glass of shepherds and bandits painted by local shepherds and bandits, it was scarcely a parlor, much less a consulting room. Only the cupboard's worth of scalpels, forceps, catheters, tenon saws, specula, microscope, stethoscope, stoppered vials, and dog-eared medical books—a modest selection from his well-stocked office in Kraków—confirmed his profession.

“Are you telling me you have a cold? It would hardly surprise me since you insist on walking barefoot in the grass and bathing in an icy stream at dawn.”

“I don't”—she started coughing—“have a cold.”

“Of course not.” He came toward the bench where she was sitting and extended his open hand.

“Ah, the good air of Zakopane,” Maryna said, surrendering her delicate wrist.

He shut his eyes as he stood over her. A minute passed. With her free hand Maryna reached for the plate of raspberries at the end of the bench and slowly ate three. Another minute had passed.

“Henryk!”

Opening his eyes, he grinned mischievously. “I like taking your pulse.”

“I've noticed.”

“So I can reassure you”—he placed her hand back in her lap—“how healthy you are.”

“Stop it, Henryk. Have a raspberry.”

“And your headaches?”

“I always have a headache.”

“Even in Zakopane?”

“All I have to do is relax. As you know, I rarely have a fullblown headache when I'm working too hard.”

He had returned to the table. “And yet your instincts are right to tell you to seek refuge here whenever you can from the hurly-burly of Warsaw and all the touring.”

“What refuge!” she exclaimed. “Admit it, friend, it's hardly the undiscovered village it was when we arrived here four years ago.”

“When
you
arrived, dear Maryna. Please recall that you were the first well-known person to come here every summer. I merely followed.”

“Not you,” she said. “I mean all the others.”

Henryk tilted his head, forefinger to bearded chin, and gazed out the window at his inspiriting view of the Giewont and the distant summit of the Kasprowy.

“What do you expect, since each time you and Bogdan come a few more people discover the beauties of the place. You are the village's biggest populator.”

“Well, at least they are my friends. But now there are people I don't know in that so-called hotel old Czarniak has opened. Zakopane with a hotel!”

“Where you go everyone follows,” he said, smiling.

“And the foreigners. Don't tell me they are here because of me. English, God be praised.” She paused, she dramatized. “If one must have tourists, let them be English. At least we don't have any Germans.”

“Just wait,” he said. “They'll come.”

*   *   *

THIS YEAR'S
stay was different. For one thing, they had arrived much earlier, and they were not on holiday. Bogdan had proposed they assemble everyone involved in the plan—their plan: it had not been hard to bring Bogdan around again. Maryna thought they should invite just a few friends, those who were wavering. Ryszard and the others on whom she already knew they could count need not come.

After journeying to Kraków, and recovering Piotr—two years earlier Maryna had sent the child away from Warsaw, where the language of instruction in schools was Russian, to live with her mother in Kraków, where the more lenient Austrian rule permitted Polish-language schooling—Maryna and Bogdan spent a week of afternoons in Stefan's flat, often joined by the guardedly reassuring Henryk. Stefan was now confined to bed much of the time. The morning after their arrival Bogdan himself went to the food market square to arrange everything with one of the highlanders sure to be loitering there after selling off his load of mutton and cheese. Familiar faces crowded around him, offering their services, their wagons. Bogdan picked a tall fellow with lank black hair who spoke a shade more intelligibly than the others and, in his comical farrago of educated Polish and highlander patois, instructed the man to tell the old widow whose hut they'd rented last September to ready it now for the arrival of himself and his wife and stepson with five others. The man, a Jędrek, was to be prepared to bring them to the village one week from today. He declared that it would be an unforgettable honor to carry the Count and the Countess and their party in his wagon.

They had known only the summer, when the mountains above the tree line look clear of snow and the meadows have gone bare of flowers. The high mountains now were still covered with snow—winters are long and harsh in the Tatras—but as the wagon passed along green meadows carpeted with purple crocuses, purple with a dash of dark blue, Jędrek's passengers could hardly refuse to call it spring. Maryna reached the village excited, then edgy—feelings she identified as the elation that follows the making of a great decision and the restlessness that succeeds the familiar discomforts of the journey. It could not be a headache, she was sure, although this giddiness and pointless energy were not unlike what she would feel, sometimes, three or four hours before the onset of one. No, it could not be a headache. But as she stood with Bogdan admiring the sunset, she had to acknowledge that there was something wrong with the way she was seeing, it had become full of dazzles and zigzags and flicker and sprays of light, the sun seemed to be boiling, and she could no longer deny the throbbing in her right temple and the pressure in the nape of her neck. She who had never canceled a performance because of a headache collapsed for twenty-four hours, lying in the dim sleeping chamber with a towel wrapped tightly around her head in a leaden stuporous daze. Piotr tiptoed in and out, and asked when she was going to get up and clearly needed to be comforted, and she made the effort to keep the child with her for a while. It was all right if she patted his hair and kissed his hand with her eyes squeezed shut. Whenever she opened them, Piotr seemed very small and far away, as did Bogdan, crouching by the bed, asking again what he might bring her—they seemed to have lattices on their faces. There were faces enough peering out of the dark knots in the beams that supported the ceiling, which seemed to be just above her, pressing down on her, shimmering, scintillating. All she wanted was to be left alone. To vomit. To sleep.

The headache she had later in their stay was mild compared to this, one of the worst Maryna could remember. But after she recovered she was very fretful. There were long insomniac nights watching the shadows on the wall (she kept one oil lamp lit) and listening to Piotr's adenoidal breathing, Józefina's snoring, Wanda's coughing, a sheepdog barking. Once a night Piotr would crawl into her bed to tell her that he needed to use the outhouse and she had to come with him because a horrible witch lived in the yard who looked like old Mrs. Bachleda. And when they returned to the sleeping chamber, he would want to get back into her bed because, he explained, the witch would try to kill him in his dreams. Useless for Maryna to tell Piotr he was far too big to have such childish fears. But soon, hearing the noisy mouth-breathing that signified sleep, she could carry him to his mattress and go outside again to gaze up at the blackness spattered with stars. Then, finally, a few hours before dawn, it was her turn to sleep. And to have odd dreams, too: that her mother was a bird, that Bogdan had a knife and hurt himself with it, that something terrible was hanging from a tree.

She was often tired. And some days she would feel “dangerously well,” as she put it, for any exceptional energy or high spirits might be a sign that she was to have one of her disabling headaches the following day. The antic thoughts, the uncontrollable urge to laugh or sing or whistle or dance—she would pay for these. Convinced the headaches were due to a slackening of effort, she took more strenuous walks than ever; it seemed that she had gathered her friends around her mostly in order to leave them.

She walked partly to exhaust herself—and had no need of company. Bogdan helped her dress, tenderly booted her, and watched her until she disappeared, heading southwest. From the village to the higher meadow leading to Mount Giewont was about seven kilometers. From there she crossed into the forest and followed the trail that brought her, breathless, to a still higher plateau with grass, dwarf shrubs, and Alpine flowers; in giddy homage to the murder of Adrienne Lecouvreur by the gift of poisoned flowers, she picked a bunch of edelweiss, kissed the odorless blossoms, and lifted her face to the sun. She would have liked to climb to the crest of the Giewont, which she'd done in previous summers with Bogdan and friends and a guide from the village. But, afraid of the dark fancies crowding her mind, she didn't dare attempt it alone. Even to venture into the foothills through patches of melting snow, and partly up the slopes, she wanted Bogdan, Bogdan only, to accompany her.

Bogdan's stride was faster than Maryna's, and she didn't mind walking behind him. That way she could feel both accompanied and alone. But sometimes she had to bring him to her side, when she saw something he might be missing. A crow in a tree. The silhouette of a hut. A cross on a hill. A grouping of chamois or an ibex on a nearby crag. The eagle swooping down on some luckless marmot.

“Wait,” she would cry, “did you see that?” Or: “I want to show you something.”

“What?”

“Up there.”

He would look in the direction she pointed.

“From here. Come back here.”

He would come halfway and look again.

“No, right here.”

She would take his arm and bring him back to where she had stopped to admire, so he could place his booted feet just … there. Then, standing at his side, she could watch him seeing what she had seen and, thoughtfully, not moving for a minute to show he really had seen it.

What a tyrant I am, Maryna did sometimes think. But he doesn't seem to mind. He's so kind, so patient, so husbandly. That was the true liberty, the true satisfaction of marriage, wasn't it? That you could ask someone, legitimately demand of someone, to see what you saw. Exactly what you saw.

*   *   *

FROM A LETTER
that Maryna entrusted to one of the highlanders leaving for the market in Kraków, to post as soon as he arrived:

Ryszard, what have you been doing, thinking, planning? Given your habitual fine opinion of yourself, perhaps I shouldn't confide that you have been missed here by all of us. Do not feel too self-important, however. For this may be because our usual occupations have been taken from us. First it was snowing for two days—yes, snow in May! And now we've had three days of cold rain, so Bogdan and I and the friends have had no choice but to decree ourselves housebound. And now I remember what it was like to be a child in a large family who has been denied permission to go out. For, thus cooped up, we have tired of all subjects of conversation, even that most on our minds, and despite the extreme interest of what Bogdan has told us about a colony in one of the New England states called Brook Farm. Well then, you'll say, amuse yourselves. But we have! I have devised charades for those who wanted to exercise their acting skills (it wouldn't have been fair for me to participate)—Bogdan has beaten Jakub and Julian at chess—we have composed songs both jolly and sad (Tadeusz is learning to play the
gęśle,
that fiddle-like instrument we've heard at the shepherds' encampments)—we have recited Mickiewicz to each other and got through all of
As You Like It
and
Twelfth Night.
And, yes, it's still raining.

Guess what we did today. We were reduced to entertaining ourselves by killing flies. Truly! This morning among Piotr's toys I found two tiny bows, Julian made arrows of matches with a needle at the end, and we took turns aiming at the drowsy flies ornamenting the wooden walls of the room where we sit, applauding as one by one our victims fell at our feet. What do you say to such an occupation for Juliet or Mary Stuart?

Nevertheless, don't suppose it's because I am bored that I am inviting you to join us. We're certain to remain at least another two weeks, in which time the weather is bound to improve and much could be discussed, and it occurs to me that since Julian now seems quite committed and eager, you should be here too, so that we may settle some details of the new plan in which you have a leading role. And you can reassure Wanda, who is distressed over their impending separation, that you will keep an eye on her husband and make sure he does not court any unnecessary danger, although, knowing you both, I think it should be the other way around! So, consider yourself invited—if (yes, there is an if) you give me your word on one delicate matter. What does dear Maryna want of me that I would not willingly grant her, you will be thinking. I know your warm heart. But I also know something else about you. Will you forgive my frankness? You must promise to behave like a gentleman with the local girls. Yes, Ryszard, I am aware of your bad habits. But not in Zakopane, I beg you! You are my guest. I may yet come back here, I have made a commitment to these people. Do we understand each other, my friend? Yes? Then come, dear Ryszard.